Locker Room Cultivates a Reluctance to Criticize

Image

Camaraderie behind the scenes, if not quite as strong as imagined, and self-preservation keep some N.F.L. players from speaking out against teammates.CreditCreditIllustration by Sam Manchester/The New York Times

As doping grew pervasive in cycling in recent decades, riders banded together and protected one another, even as laws were broken. The omerta permeated baseball, too, when players rarely grumbled publicly about their peers’ use of performance-enhancing drugs.

The latest case study of group dynamics in professional sports is now playing out in N.F.L. locker rooms in the aftermath of the Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson episodes. A lurid video surfaced of Rice knocking out his fiancée with a punch to the head, and photos spread online of injuries that Peterson, like Rice a star running back, inflicted on his 4-year-old son. The cases stirred a national uproar among the news media, fans, parents, wives — seemingly everyone except other N.F.L. players.

In a subculture commonly described as a family or brotherhood, public support is often the default, and prevailing, reaction in locker rooms.

“Why don’t we see more collective action among athletes?” said Dr. Eric M. Carter, an associate professor of sociology at Georgetown College in Kentucky and the author of “Boys Gone Wild: Fame, Fortune and Deviance Among Professional Football Players.” “Because they’ve got too much to lose individually, or at least they perceive they have too much to lose individually.”

He added, “It goes back to that kind of shared culture in which all these guys are enmeshed, so it’s hard for them to throw another guy under the bus, per se, even if they don’t get along.”

In interviews with former and current athletes across major professional sports, players said that there were indiscretions they were far less willing to tolerate than others, but that they generally preferred to address these matters internally rather than publicly because airing grievances in the news media could be perceived as violating the code that governs the locker room.

As the Rice and Peterson cases have rocked the N.F.L., players have been asked for comment. Many have condemned domestic violence or child abuse, but few have taken strong public stances against Rice or Peterson.

Image

Broncos defensive tackle Terrance Knighton spoke out quickly and strongly against Ray Rice on the day graphic video turned up of Rice hitting his future wife.CreditJack Dempsey/Associated Press

(Denver Broncos defensive tackle Terrance Knighton was among the few who did. He expressed his opinion in a series of posts on Twitter on Sept. 8, the day graphic footage turned up of Rice slugging his fiancée, who is now his wife. Knighton urged that Rice be expelled from the league and put in jail. But, saying that he did not “give a damn who u are or how much money you make,” he also urged his fellow players to “speak up” and “stand up for what’s right.”)

Jeff Lageman, a defensive end who played 10 seasons in the N.F.L., likened the phenomenon to a spat involving him and his older brother.

“He’d beat the hell out of me roughhousing and stuff, but if anybody tried to do the same thing, it was like, ‘Whoa, wait, you’re not allowed to do that; I’m his brother and you’re not,’ ” Lageman said. “It’s almost like the same mentality in football. You want to stand up for one of your own. And when you do that, guys do that because they feel obligated to do it.”

Carter characterized the N.F.L. locker room culture as “a different animal” compared with other popular team sports. While interviewing and surveying 104 players for his 2009 book, Carter said he was fascinated to discover what he considered a genuine lack of camaraderie. It was hardly a representative sample, he cautioned, but there were undercurrents that created a lack of trust and hindered the forming of strong relationships: rampant turnover; unceasing competition; nonguaranteed contracts; the sheer size of the roster, more than twice as large as in baseball or hockey.

“I think it’s part of that ‘We all have short careers, we’ve got to get what we want right now’ mentality, ‘We’ve got to protect ourselves,’ in that sense,” Carter said. “Maybe it comes off as protecting their teammates, which is what we would all like to think, that there’s this real social bond that exists among these guys, but maybe not so much as you’d think.”

In professional sports, the locker room is more than a place where athletes dress. It is where players culled from diverse backgrounds, and at different stages of their lives and careers, ostensibly strive to sacrifice individual goals for the good of the team. It is where ribbing and banter abound, and sometimes, as demonstrated with the Miami Dolphins’ bullying scandal that engulfed the league last season, it can turn ugly.

“There are things that would be said in the locker room, on the practice squad, on a football field, trying to get into that person’s head,” said Antonio Garay, a defensive lineman who played seven N.F.L. seasons. “Because there is a huge psychological part of football.”

The locker room is also where players find sanctuary from external demands and pressures.

“You stay a kid as long as possible by playing professional sports,” Garay said. “There’s certain realities that you don’t have to cope with every day that a normal person has to cope with. You’re very blessed because you’ve almost found the fountain of youth until someone tells you you’re too old, too banged up or your time has just come.”

Image

Brandon McCarthy, right, said there was little incentive to discuss a provocative issue.CreditKathy Willens/Associated Press

The news media often dramatizes the sense of solidarity among teammates, Garay said. He cited several factors that can transform the locker room into an incubator for anxiety, uncertainty and self-preservation. Garay said he had been part of teams in which rookies were advised to concern themselves with making the roster, not making friends. Among many players, job security can be so tenuous that they do not want to give their employers a reason to view them as expendable or a distraction. They know that one misstep, either on the field or off, could affect their lives as much as their careers.

Antonio Pierce, a linebacker who played nine N.F.L. seasons, said: “I know what guys deal with on a daily basis, the stress and burden of having money, fame. Most guys are not quick to criticize a teammate and say he’s a horrible guy before they know everything.”

Pierce experienced a comparable situation in his own locker room, when he was entangled in the legal case of a Giants teammate, Plaxico Burress. Pierce drove Burress to a hospital after Burress’s loaded weapon discharged in a Manhattan nightclub, wounding him in the leg, and later that night returned the gun to New Jersey.

“Once you realize a guy made a true bonehead mistake, you’ve got to be honest with yourself,” said Pierce, who testified before a grand jury but was not indicted. “At the end of the day, the guys on the camera could be talking about you. Don’t judge me. It’s the same thing with me and Plax. To this day, I know I didn’t do something wrong. All I was doing was protecting a teammate.”

A similar example, perhaps, occurred in the N.H.L. last season, when Semyon Varlamov, a goalie for the Colorado Avalanche who was arrested on suspicion of assaulting his girlfriend, was allowed to continue playing during the investigation. The charges were eventually dropped.

“You’re kind of left in limbo of whether this guy did it or not,” said Chris Therien, a defenseman who played 11 N.H.L. seasons. If a teammate had been accused of domestic violence, Therien said he would not take any on-ice measures — he would still pass the puck to him, for instance — but that he would lose respect for him.

Several players agreed, saying that they would express disapproval in private.

“I’d think you’d be speaking out of turn,” Therien said, explaining why players, in general, might be reluctant to criticize a teammate. “I think that would be the issue. I think there’s a fear factor knowing that you’re part of the team, and if there’s 24 guys that aren’t going to talk and one that is, you become vilified by the other 24 guys in that scenario.”

That taboo of speaking out of turn seems to apply across the sporting landscape. Jon Barry, a guard who played 14 seasons in the N.B.A., said even if he had strong feelings about a teammate’s action, it is management’s place to decide how to handle the situation, not his or the group’s.

Image

Chris Therien said of reluctance in criticizing a teammate: “I’d think you’d be speaking out of turn.”CreditRick Stewart/Getty Images

From his experience, Yankees pitcher Brandon McCarthy, who has played for five teams in nine seasons, said that baseball clubhouses tend to adopt a mind-set of “we are us” rather than “us against the world,” which football players embrace.

Even so, personal relationships override teamwork, and McCarthy said he can tell when a player is genuine when standing up for a teammate instead of doing so out of obligation. He stressed that there is no “groupthink” at play, but that there is little incentive for a player to discuss a provocative issue.

“It’s not, ‘Oh, he doesn’t deserve this,’ ” McCarthy said. “It’s just a matter of what good does it do.”

He added, “It might be noble and you’re 100 percent in the right. It’s also, ‘Why do I want to bring that on myself?’ Now I’m the one in front for answering all these questions. It might be just in the interest of self-preservation. I’m not sticking up for the victim, I’m not helping anything along, I’m just the guy who’s making myself the visible face of this.”

Lageman compared the moral standard within the locker room to a penitentiary framework, in which the abuse or molestation of a child might be considered among the more egregious crimes. There are degrees of infractions, he said.

“If a guy goes into a bar and gets into a bar fight and seriously injures somebody else, the typical reaction in the locker room is, ‘Boys will be boys,’ Lageman said. “Whereas if a guy, Adrian Peterson, for example, is whipping his kid to the point where his teammates can see the visible cuts on his child’s legs, he’s not going to have a lot of support in the locker room for something like that.”

What can complicate the dynamic, Lageman said, is whether the perpetrator is a valuable member of the team, as Rice was and Peterson is. A player, he said, might be more inclined to accept a teammate who is vital to the team’s success. Lageman said what matters most among players is respect.

“If players respect another player on any particular level, most of them would say, ‘Out of respect, you can’t say that about Ray,’ ” Lageman said. “Even if you feel that way, just keep it to yourself.”

Billy Witz contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B9 of the New York edition with the headline: Locker Room Cultivates a Reluctance to Criticize. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe